As Covid Cases Increase, India's 'R' Factor Highest Since April Last Year

The 'R' factor - a statistic used worldwide to track, and potentially, control the spread of the virus - is a measure of how many people are being infected by one person

Concern over an alarming increase in new coronavirus cases in India - 131,750 over the past 72 hours - was underlined Monday by a spike in the 'R', or 'reproduction rate', of the virus, which has jumped to 1.32 - the highest since April last year, when there were fewer than 27,000 cases. The 'R' factor - a statistic used worldwide to track, and potentially, control the spread of the virus - is a measure of how many people are being infected by one infected person. A 'R' of 2.0 indicates that one person with COVID-19 will, on average, infect two others. Each of those two will infect two more (spreading the disease to an average of four people) and so on. In a pandemic situation the ideal 'R' target is below 1.0, which ensures that the virus will eventually stop spreading because it cannot infect enough people to sustain the outbreak.